So Microsoft’s self-styled human face is now some other company’s human face. This must be the first corporate human face transplant ever attempted. Will it take? Or will the new body reject the used puss? And what does it say about this whole human face business when a person proclaims himself to be a company’s human face and then, when a better offer comes along, tears himself from the old noggin and stitches himself to the new one? That seems a little untoward to me. If I were in a punny mood, I just might call it a mugging.
A company should probably be a little nervous about letting some blogger set up shop as its human face. The earnings the blogger pulls in through the attention economy may accrue more to his own bottom line than the firm’s. As Doc Searls puts it in a post titled “companies are schwag”: “what matters most in the long run is who you are. Not who you work for.” Which is something a company might want to keep in mind when choosing a face, or even a mask, for that matter.
A fair point, Nick — although I don’t think Scoble ever “proclaimed” himself to be Microsoft’s human face.
Mathew,
From Scoble’s blog in Feb. 2003: “One thing I’ve noticed is that Microsoft does not have a human face other than Gates and Ballmer. Everything you see about Microsoft has been ‘approved’ by PR/marketing professionals. That’s the way it was supposed to have been done in the old days, but today, one little jerk like me can post something on his weblog and, within hours, have several thousand very important readers … Weblogs put a human face on corporations.”
In Dec 2005: “What good are blogs to Microsoft? Well, OK, we’ve put a human face on the borg.”
A quote from Tom Peters that Scoble highlights at the front of his book Naked Conversations: “Robert Scoble, single-handedly at first, has given the Evil Empire (Microsoft, who else?) a ‘Human Face’ … thanks to his Blog.”
From an article in today’s Toronto Globe & Mail web site:
“Mr. Scoble, a software marketer who picked up on the just-emerging blogging trend in 2000, said he had told Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer that he wanted to ‘put a human face on Microsoft and he took me up on that.'”
Nick
so it is ok to pay q hired gun like Tiger Woods or Captain Kirk to be your outside face, but not an hired executive?
Nick, corporate communications needs a revolution. While they build contingency plans and chaos theory in most business decisions, corporations pretend their messages can be impeccably controlled. Tech vendors, in particular, refuse to acknowledge the changing influence game – still want to just issue press releases and brief Gartner. Corporations have built call centers and templatized email on their sites to put distance and walls between their executives and their customers.
On of the reasons Wall Street is so dynamic is they are not afraid of employee “stars”. Sure they need controls around them but they attract the best talent and give them tons of leeway not just outsource it to Woods. Marketing needs a similar revolution. Savvy, believable executives are great for customer credibility – and two communications not just commercials and press releases are needed for the cred…
You win.
Nick,
I think you might not be seeing the bigger picture with this one. Yes Scoble was their highest profile blogger, but the “human face” people refer to encompasses much more than just the contributions Robert made to his blog during his stint at Microsoft.
The thousands of Microsoft employees who now blog are not going to stop blogging tomorrow. Channel 9 is not going to disappear from the web. The cultural changes that Scoble helped play a part in (I can’t say how big or small a part, but no one can say he did nothing) are not going to be suddenly undone.
These things are just a few examples of the “human face” that people refer to. Scoble wasn’t the face, he helped create it.
Cheers,
Keith
Vinnie,
Hired guns tend to stay hired, unless the company chooses to change their image. I don’t think Bill Shatner can go to Priceline and say, “You know, I don’t thing that representing Priceline is in my long-term career interests — I got this offer from a startup company where I can do their commercials and they’ll give me stock options, and they’ll film them closer to my family, so I’m going to stop doing your commercials.”